Three weeks since Long Beach Studios talks last surfaced, it seems there may be a deal in the works. Perhaps …

Remember Oct. 12? That was the day we were absolutely, positively supposed to have ourselves a Long Beach Studios—signed, sealed and delivered. At least the Press-Telegram said so, in a story Oct. 10, but by the day in question—Columbus Day, coincidentally—we still didn’t have a deal.

Three weeks later, what do we have? A series of well-sourced rumors suggesting that the deal is (very slowly) getting done; that Long Beach Studios Chairman Jack O’Halloran may actually be hanging his hat in an Aqua penthouse someday soon; and that when there is a real Long Beach Studios to talk about, I’ll be hearing about it in a press conference downtown somewhere.

And that, literally, is it. After all those blown done-deal deadlines, a decent rumor seems almost comforting. Almost.

Of course, there are the standard denials, the terse conversations, and the new phone numbers. Ready? Here we go.

First, the new telephone number: it must be O’Halloran’s.

The would-be studio chief has always taken the unusual step of leaving his cellular telephone number on a voicemail message somewhere—and I admire him for it—but when I dialed those 11 digits repeatedly today, I got another recorded message telling me O’Halloran’s number may have changed. A new number wasn’t available.

Maybe he’s gone underground for a spell.

O’Halloran’s mouthpiece, the affable Joe Marich of Marich Communications in Los Angeles, had slightly more than that to say about the deal.

“We’re—again, kind of, once all the elements are completed, we’ll have more details available, which I can’t go into right now,” Marich said of Long Beach Studios’ oft-reported plan to buy 78 acres of unused land from The Boeing Company and build a purported $375 million film studio there.

“It will all become clear very soon,” Marich said of the fantastic-if-it-happens trade of former Boeing 717 land for lots of money. He reminded me that “ … even if this wasn’t Long Beach Studios, any deal of this size, it just it takes time to get everything squared away.”

That’s true, and from what I’ve been hearing, the attorneys brokering this particular exchange seem to span the globe, from South Africa to Australia.

Officials at The Boeing Company said much the same.

“All I can say is nothing’s changed since the last time we talked,” said Boeing spokeswoman Debby Arkell. She characterized Boeing’s involvement as “continuing to work with the movie studio.

“We’ve been sticking close to them ever since the deal fell out of escrow,” Arkell said.

City officials wouldn’t say how close they were to the situation.

“No comment,” said a pointed Becki Ames, who is Mayor Bob Foster’s Chief of Staff, when asked if anything was new in the Long Beach Studios deal.

Reminded that this was a deal which had been in the works for a while—and newly hot for nearly a month—Ames reiterated that the Mayor’s office would have nothing to add.

“We said the same thing then that we’re saying now,” said Ames, clearly not thrilled to be rehashing a deal that’s been more than a year in the making.

Actually, her boss’s words were slightly more illuminating when he talked to the P-T’s Paul Eakins on Oct. 10.

“I want to see a deal that’s inked,” Foster told the P-T.

So do a lot of other people.

Tags: Aqua, Becki Ames, California, Debby Arkell, jack o'halloran, Joseph Marich, Long Beach, Long Beach Studios, Marich Communications, Mayor Bob Foster, Paul Eakins, press telegram, Southern California, The Boeing Company, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas